


high

by ledtherevolution



Series: Sentiment [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF John, Drug Use, Jim Moriarty in Sherlock's Mind Palace, John is a Very Good Doctor, M/M, Prostitution, SO SORRY, and irl, heavy drug use, jim is a sweetheart, light implied prostitution that is, like going all the way to when sherlock was like...fifteen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-06
Updated: 2016-03-06
Packaged: 2018-05-25 04:12:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6179725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ledtherevolution/pseuds/ledtherevolution
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock relapses. Jim takes him to the hospital. John is a good best friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	high

**Author's Note:**

> So sorry to House_Tyrell_Baratheon, this is angsty, and it is kinda depressing. THERE IS A HAPPY(ish) ENDING. I promise.

It’s morning. Of which day, he couldn’t tell. The sun slated through the blinds, oozing onto the wooden floors to remind him that time had never paused through his drug-induced version Nirvana. There was a soreness in his bones he couldn’t quite name, but it settled there, seeping through his very fibres. It felt like a spoon dissection of his chest cavity. His lungs filled, his heart beat, his breath came in even huffs. It felt strange to be _alive,_ in the very basic sense of the word. Because underneath it all, he knew he wasn’t.

His grey eyes surveyed the floor, his pale fingers pressed into the cooling surface of the floor. It wasn’t soothing. He wanted to roll onto his back, but the lead in his limbs refused to twitch in any direction. The pool of sweat on the floor he was submerged in was revolting. Somewhere he could smell vomit, the acrid touch it perfumed the air with was something with which he was well acquainted. Sherlock felt dead. He, somewhere, wished he was.

Then the aches in his head to rival those dwelling between his ribs returned. He suddenly remembered what this was all about, not like he had ever stopped thinking of him. Jim Moriarty.

He hadn’t received a text or a call from him. Nothing. He felt as though he had been out for a week, but he knew it wasn’t, couldn’t, be more than seventy-two hours. He slowly, agonizingly pushed himself from the floor, tracing his hand over the buttons on his shirt. _Pulled heavily to one side, creases running down the waist, it had to have been two days, rather than the three he previously thought._

The kitchen, remarkably, looked nearly identical. There was a towel on the floor, soaked in something resembling vodka. _Funny,_ he thought bitterly. _I got my hands on that, too._ When he tentatively turned on the light, his brain immediately protested. It was like someone vigorously shaking a raw egg, but instead of yolk sloshing about, it was his cerebral fluids.

In his armchair sat the last person he wanted to see:

Mycroft Holmes.

“Brother mine, I do believe you owe me an explanation.”

He immediately wanted to retreat, to curl up inside himself and just _disappear,_ but with the way the other Holmes child was looking at him, he knew there was no escaping. Not this time. He rubbed his temples, collapsing into the sofa.

“Open your eyes, look at me and tell me what’s wrong.” He said bitterly, rubbing the human body’s equivalent of cement from his eyes. He felt like a child, preparing to be reprimanded. But Mycroft had to have known that nothing he was about to say would ease the aching in his marrow, the pounding of ocean waves on his frontal lobe. Mycroft’s face fell.

“For God’s sake Sherlock Holmes you do not expect me to sit back and watch you destroy-”

_There is nothing left to destroy._

“Isn’t that what you normally do?” he said, settling anxiously into the cushions.

“Yes and it seems to be very much not working.” Mycroft stands, crossing the room to yank his wrist up from his lap. “Three different cocktails I see,” he sneers, shoving his hand away. “If you don’t get this under control-“

“I do have it under control,” he growls. “I only use it when I need to-“

“Then what’s the cause now-” he stops. His face falls. His eyes lock onto his face. “Oh, _Sherlock._ You aren’t…You haven’t-Jim hasn't _left-"_

“Yes. We fought. He's been at his parents', and if you’d like to continue your patronizing I do believe you’ll have to get on with it. I haven’t been able to sleep this off yet-“

“You need to explain this to me, you _owe_ me that much-”

“I don’t owe you anything.” He repeated. Stars exploded behind his optic nerve, nebulas forming in his corneas. He couldn’t be caught up in the beauty of fading vision and blurred lines, for the pain of carrying a universe on your shoulders was nearly unbearable.

“Did you at least make a list?” Mycroft asked. Sherlock flipped a torn piece of paper from the inside of his coat pocket with ‘10mgs of cocaine’ scrawled on it. Mycroft crossed the room, thanked him and made a move to leave.

His phone rings from the countertop. Once, twice, three times. He stands up much too quickly and finds himself clutching Mycroft’s arm for support. He strides as best as he can to the kitchen, picking up his mobile and answering.

“Sherlock Holmes,” he says. But it sounds as if he’s had the wind knocked out of him.

“Hey,” John says. “It’s just after two. On Saturday.”

“Yes.”

“I haven’t heard from you in three days? I was just making sure you’re – you know – still _breathing.”_

“You’re angry again.”

“Brilliant deduction, yes. Where have you been? Lestrade says you haven’t taken a case in a couple of weeks. You sound like you’ve been strangled within an inch of death and you are going to tell me what the _bloody hell_ is wrong with you.”

“I’ve been busy,” he says.

“No you haven’t,” he snaps. “I just got off the phone with Mrs. Hudson, you haven’t left once all week. So unless there’s a case I don’t know about-”

“Mycroft is here, I’ll have to go. He has something…important to tell me.”

“Fine. But I want you to call me as soon as you’re finished to tell me _exactly_ what’s wrong.”

He hangs up.

John Watson hadn’t texted him since he came back, and when he did, it was only about when clients were to be meeting them where and when Lestrade had asked to see him. The usual, at least for John.

For the first few days, he thought nothing of it. _Oh, he’s just mad. He’ll get over it._ But then, it lasted. It lasted and lasted and now, as he stares at his phone on the counter, he wonders if Mary put him up to this, asked him to call.

He settles himself down to that conclusion. _Mary asked him. Mary asked him. Mary asked him. Mary asked him. Mary asked him._

He chants it to himself like a mantra.

He decides not to call back.

He decides to turn off his phone.

He decides to visit the Vauxhall Arches.

“You really should, you know,” Mycroft says and Sherlock can’t tell if he’s referring to John, or the Arches. “If you need me, you know where I am,” and that was the closest they’d ever gotten to saying ‘I love you’.

 

Before leaving, Sherlock presses four nicotine patches, two to each wrist. He abandons his Belstaff for a hoodie, button up for one of Jim’s old tee shirts and jeans for these weird, spandex-like track pants he used to use for dance.

Although he intends to go to the Arches, he finds himself staring into the face of Victor Trevor.

“What do you want?” he says, voice sickeningly sweet. Before, he would have trusted him, followed him anywhere. But now…not Now, he decides.

“You know what I need,” he replies.

Victor stands at the door of an old opium den that had been around since the early nineteenth century, before the Wars started in China. Victor pulls him in by the wrist, shutting the door behind them.

 

Sherlock leaves with half a dozen syringes, 40 mL of heroin, 45 mL of cocaine, 45 mL of morphine and 25 mL of oxycodone and a hickey the size of his fist on the back of his neck.

Jim will certainly kill him.

 

Sherlock went to the arches, just briefly. Briefly enough to appreciate the wonder in the stars.

He’d once tried to learn the map of the stars, the ones he could see at least. But everything was _moving,_ stars were born and dying every day, the Earth was haphazardly rotating in the center of it all and the stars weren’t _concrete_ enough for fourteen-year-old Sherlock Holmes. So in a fit of frustration when he couldn’t find////---

\---DELETE

Now he knows nothing of the stars and can only look at them and wish he walked among them instead of people.

 

 

John waits until four minutes after midnight to come over to 221B.

He’s called Sherlock at least seven, no, eight times since the row earlier. He’s texted him twice and he’s received nothing. Nothing. It just like – no, this is worse. It’s been two weeks since they last saw each other. It had been nine days since Sherlock had last texted him back. It had been four days since Sherlock had been on his blog last, and three days since Sherlock had stopped reading the texts.

Something was wrong and John was determined to figure it out.

Sherlock got home as John was settling into his chair again. And when John becomes cognizant of Sherlock standing in the doorway, he bolts upright.

And it’s all specifically Not Good. John is staring at him and there’s so much heat in his eyes Sherlock can almost feel the burning in his chest. Then there’s the pull of temptation, the creeping of the drug laced tide crashing over him-

“Mycroft told me you were using again,” John says. “I would like to know where you keep it and for you to give me the rest of it to me.” John clenches his fist once, twice, three times, four- and Sherlock can’t remove his gaze from his hands. He can’t give it to him, not yet, not now, not _ever._ No, he can’t give them over. Because without them he can’t function. He _feels,_ he _breathes,_ he’s not invincible anymore. Not since the fall. Not since he abandoned John, not since… No, he won’t give them to John, he can’t.

So he lies.

“I don’t have any more.” He says smoothly.

“Yes you do,” John says. “Sherlock _bloody_ Holmes don’t you dare lie to me because so help me _GOD_ I will tear you to pieces-“

“Shh! You’ll wake Mrs. Hudson,” he says. “Of course, I’m not lying to you,” the weight of the vials in his pocket feels like lead balloons, pulling his mind along with them right down to the ocean floor. Like they’ve been dumped off a boat straight to the bottom.

"Alright,” John says. “Then why have I found that in your bedroom alone you have two _unused_ syringes, in the linen closet you have three more?"

Sherlock doesn't answer.

“What happened to you? Is that…a hickey?” John’s fingers press into the flowering purple bruise. Jealousy, no. It couldn’t be. It wouldn’t. “Sherlock!”

Exasperation. That was Good. Exasperation was something he could handle. Ex-asperation. His brain spun on its axis. Sherlock was fairly certain John Watson was watching him, but he could barely keep his eyes open, let alone focus on the one person keeping him anchored.

“Are you alright?” John asked, placing a steady hand at his carotid artery and Sherlock is almost certain that his fingerprints were burning into his _skin_ and if _he knew that universes cycled his veins every waking moment for John Hamish Watson he’d-_

“I’m fine,” Sherlock says. But he isn’t. Sherlock Holmes was dreaming in Renaissance paintings and deep ballads, falling stars tracing the outline of his spine; he blinked. The walls around him were blearily swimming in and out of focus with filmy blurs. Cadences wrack his brain and for a moment, John Watson is not with him.

With the crests of waves breaking against his ribs in the haze of _morning dew on his lips, seeping into his very bones-_

“Sherlock,” John says, staying the shiver that cracks his spine. “I’m going to call a doctor.”

“You are a doctor,” Sherlock says. He’s vaguely aware of hands on him, but they do nothing more than distract him from the burning inside.

“Sherlock.”

_John._

“You sonofabitch how much did you take?”

“What?” He’s beginning to slur and it’s all distinctly Not Good. And he feels John’s hand against his wrist _cradling his pulse into poetry, spinning sonnets with the crackling strands of his heart. Just let me unravel, push me to the horizon between living and being alive, please just let me drift…_

“Sherlock,” comes John’s voice again.

-voice

-why did

-who did

-what did///

//you take

“Sherlock Holmes you will answer me.”

He feels his bedroom floor beneath his back, his eyes roll from one point to the next.

A hand cracks the left side of his face, smattering the _shards of incompetence, the moon I in my eyes now, smeared with London fog and dusted across with stars. Millions of lightyears and creations of stars and explosions of supernovas have clashed together to make this picture possible. The light I am seeing now has traveled millions of miles and through time and space to land right here in my eyes. The stars I am seeing now have been dead for hundreds of years._

Then he thinks back to the Van Buren supernova. And how it was only visible for a few months. How it lived and died before anyone saw of its presence. Before it could be named it was dead.

And then there’s the swelling in his throat. The crashing roll of nausea crests over him and John’s deodorant morphs into the smell of dripping pipes and rusted-over copper. The room dives, pulling Sherlock’s stomach with it.

“Are you alright?”

He can’t. Speak. He can barely even _breathe_. He tries to fight down the panic, stay the trembling in his entire body. The room goes glassy once again and this time, a holding cell in Iran comes back into focus. The smells of blood and iron nearly cause him to vomit. Sirens are wailing and in the chaos a man in a mask is leading him down through the halls with the barrel of an AK-47 pressed to his spine. He’s crashing, breaking, falling and he cannot control it.

“Jesus Christ Sherlock, talk to me,” John urges, pulling him back. _I’m here not there. I’m here not there. I’m here not there I’m here not_

Time oozes and flushes together and he can’t tell if it’s day or night and with John’s eyes staring into his _soul_ he can’t.

“I’m…” he begins, fibrils of panic lurch forward and- “I can’t breathe,” he cries softly, a breaking, choking sound.

“What? Sherlock – Jesus – I’m right here, God,” Sherlock realizes that he has his fingers knotted so tightly in John’s shirt his knuckles are white and trembling. “Calm down.” John commands and it does little else besides bring his crazed fog to a new intensity. Sherlock wrenches his hand free, shaking more vigourously than twenty seconds ago. He places his fingers at John’s jugular and counts. The floor feels more solid beneath his knees, the room a little clearer. John’s face is mere centimeters away, fingers at Sherlock’s wrist, feeling the blood sluggishly surge in erratic bursts. A side effect.

The drugs have temporarily left him, but he knows they will be back. A side effect.

John touches him gently, fingers ghosting over the blue ridges saying something in a steady voice, over and over again. But Sherlock can’t focus because _you touch me like a careful interlace, brought me back, thumbled caress pressured-kiss along the familiarous ridge of bone and turning veined in mirror’s image again and a-gain._

“That’s very good, just breathe. Just like that. Yes, very good.” John huffs, swallowing and counting against the concave lens of his watch face. His lips tremble as he counts in his head. “You don’t seem to have OD-ed, that’s good. But you are still pushing the limits. One more CC and you could be in a lot more trouble.”

“I’m a graduate chemist,” he reminds, pushing himself up from the floor. John grabs his wrist and sets him down a little more roughly than necessary.

“What’s this all about? You’ve been clean for months. I have personally watched you wrestle with withdrawls so why waste all of that now?”

Sherlock swallows and stands. “You better leave before the second wave kicks in.”

“What? No, I’m not…I’m not going to leave you here alone.”

“I’m sure Mary misses you. You’ve been here for a while.”

“Sherlock-”

“I’ve caused you enough trouble, please, just go home. I’ll survive. I’d rather you not be here while you have Mary-”

“That’s it.  No.  A thousand times, no.  Sherlock,” John seethes, his eyes boring right into Sherlock’s soul, “You’ve been bloody manic for the last three days, and I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours making sure that you were still alive--making sure that you’re still _breathing_ -”

“You care if I breathe?”  Sherlock says, his voice hitched in desperation, and that’s not what he meant to say, but it’s true, because the push must have caused the Really Not Good to pool out from the corners of his brain.

“You really honestly think that I don’t? For one goddamn second, you really think that?  You really, honestly believe that--truly?”

Sherlock feels his brain bending and melding, new concepts and ideas long forgotten come in breaking – crashing waves, flooding from his skull. And perhaps his sanity as well because, there are a million other words on his lips that he should say as opposed to what he says next.

"For Jim, of course," Sherlock pinches the bridge of his nose and the bile rising in his throat threatens to spill from his lips, but he swallows.

"I understand Jim has been gone and that this is hard. But his parents need him right now, and like you said, you couldn't leave London. Not now. And that is fine, but he will be back, and you will need to be - you know - _alive_ when he gets here. So please, for Jim, be careful."

 

And John stays the night to make sure Sherlock doesn't keel over in his sleep.

And John leaves in the morning.

 

The sun rises and sets again and again, over and over. Three days pass. Jim calls with the news that he'll be back in the morning, but Sherlock doesn't hear it.

He's resting his cheek against the tile- no, it's textured - plastic molding of the bathtub. The drain is in his eyes, the water rushing around him in a continuous spinning and he wishes it would just _fucking take him._ His breathing roars and reverberates around the chasm of his skull and _Christ-_ it's so loud.

Broken, broken, _broken,_ the glass from the door shattered all around him and this is where he ends.

The thrilling book of Sherlock Holmes is ending, he can feel the pages turning in his fingertips, the Bible of his life rushing to a close ( _just like the water to the drain)._

And he thinks of Jim. He thinks of the heavy, saccharine blood sluggishly beating through his veins- and he thinks of Jim.

Jim's eyes are what most would generously call brown. But they aren't- not really. There's the green toward the center of the iris, the golden hues that _paint the autumn sky with their ochre suns and aubergine nightingales and the wind will whistle through the stars and words will be shouted into oblivion to glitter across the cosmos with little guilt_

_and no_

_S-H-A-M-E-////._

And then he remembers a poem, one from his youth. The teacher reciting it in the front of his classroom and the poem was his favorite. But he's deleted it by now, onl the jerking, flashing frames of half-lidded memories reside where the poem once did and the rest is gone.

M-M-M-M-M-Maya was the poet's first name something about the caged bird and hymns, but then there's La Carlotta in his mind, singing about the _precious little Angelou-_

_maya angelou i know why the caged bird sings_

_\---////A free bird leaps on the back_  
              Of the wind and floats downstream   
           Till the current ends and dips his wing   
        In the orange suns rays  
     And dares to claim the sky

His face is brushing Redbeard's muzzle and the words burst from his mouth in the rush of wind and Redbeard is looking at him like he's the most interesting thing in the world. And he feels the tears before he knows he's crying, feels death before he knows he's dying. And if heaven was a real place, maybe he'd see Redbeard again.

And maybe Mycroft will be forgiving and bury him in the same family plot. Where Redbeard was. Where he'd be by the week's end.

And in the comfort of his own death, barely shrouded in the sound of his heart bursting from his veins, he feels at peace. The end of his life was approaching like a steam locomotive and there is nothing he can do to stop it. Nothing nothing _nothing nothing **NOTHING** he can do to _ STOP IT.

n    o    t    h    i    n   g.

And he is at peace.

 

 

When the murky fog of the drug deep end he'd thrown himself into is parting, the air finally working itself back into his lungs, he realizes he is not alone.

He is not in the bathtub.

He is not in 221B.

He is not with Jim.

 

He is in a hospital, and the groan of that revelation escapes before he wanted it to and John's face contorts. He's scowling, then there's the brows furrowing and the crossed arms.

And it is spectacularly Not Good.

"Well good morning, Sleeping Beauty." John says. And his voice is calm, but each word punctures him like no others could.

There's a machine attached to his mouth, forcing air in and out, keeping him alive because he couldn't on his own. His eyes loll around for a bit before John realizes he's looking for Jim.

"Coffee," John snaps. "And if his flight hadn't come in as early as it had you would have died."

He knows that. He was _relieved,_ he was _ready._

"And Mycroft has this all written off as an accident but if you knew anything, you'd know that the Toxicology report would classify this as a suicide attempt. But I'm confused as to why." Sherlock opens his mouth to protest, but John beats him to it. "No, shut up Sherlock, listen to me. For once in your _god damned life will you listen to me._

I get that if you were alone and that there were no cases and no me in your life, I would understand. I would. But this self destruction has to end, it has to. Jim came in with the paramedics and he looked as if he were dying himself." John sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Sherlock Holmes, you and Jim are the only people that have ever been made to fit so perfectly together. It's a balance. Could you imagine, that if you'd died, what it would have done to him? For once, did you think of Jim Moriarty before you injected yourself with fucking lethal doses of," he flips the pages on his clipboard. "Oxycodone, heroin, morphine and cocaine?"

Sherlock opened his mouth again.

"No, I'm not done." John says, slamming the clipboard into the slot at the foot of Sherlock's bed so hard he jumped. "You have been so selfish, so _irresponsible_ with your health that you could legally be put in an institution. But Mycroft won't let that happen. Not to you."

And Sherlock is grateful.

 

Jim comes back later, heavy bags under his eyes. The coffee mug is heavy in his hands and when he sees Sherlock awake, he sighs, a smile spreading over his face.

"Well hello," he says, and Sherlock could _die-_

"Missed you," Jim said over the lip of the mug, dropping onto the edge of his bed.

Sherlock nodded.

"Still can't breathe?" He asked.

He shook his head, which was a bad idea.

"I still love you, you know that right?" he said after a while, rubbing his thumb over the handle.

And Sherlock knows.

He reaches out and wraps a pinkie around Jims, squeezes. And it's all Good, as good as it could be.


End file.
